As humans, there are cogent reasons to be despondent and heartbroken in Nigeria today and Abia State in particular.
It has been a tale of the moonlight; stories that break our humanity. If not Boko Haram slaughtering people like rams, it will be kidnapers on the rampage demanding unaffordable ransoms from their helpless victims. We move to the big thieves, some government officials who collaborate with their cronies within and outside to milk our country dry and sell off our destines upfront.
If we come down to the grassroots, it is a bitter experience of endless suffering, bad roads, and a harvest of untimely deaths caused either by chronic diseases or hunger and starvation.
There are no employment opportunities for our teeming graduates who have become objects of ridicule before the world and are therefore compelled to find a safe haven in criminalities in order to survive the hardships.
Workers’ salaries and pensions are embezzled living workers in penury. There is brain drain as the best intellectuals are living on the shores of Nigeria in search of “greener pastures.” Everywhere you go, lamentations of hunger, bad roads, unpaid salaries and pensions, unfulfilled vision, and truncated dreams rent the air.
These are our rewards for the past costly mistake we made in voting in the government of the vampires into office. And it is a confirmation that our future is bleak and unjustifiably undermined.
Are we going to allow history to repeat itself? Are we going to surrender to the whims and caprices of the bad government, the government of Saul without a fight? Are we going to allow the vampires to tighten the noose around our noses and gradually suffocate us to death?
It is time for us the survivors of these heinous crimes against humanity to rise and make a categorical statement that “our lives matter.” It is time to remove the stigma of “weary pilgrims trudging this world.”
No, we are not weary pilgrims. We will refuse to die like chickens, for we are joint heirs with Jesus Christ. If God made us in his own image and likeness and gave us free will, a will to choose right from wrong, then we must have the power to exercise that free will and have the discerning spirit to differentiate between bad government and good Government. It is a will so freely given that we can freely use it to purge ourselves of contempt of foolhardiness.
For how long shall we permit these vampires to hold us in bondage? For how long shall we remain in the threshold of darkness? For how long shall we submit to the devil’s advocacy?
Another opportunity is being offered to us to redeem our destinies from these daredevils and reposition our country on the path of greatness. It is time to confront headlong this government of vampires who occupy office they don’t deserve.
Remember, it is the vision of God that our lives should be as sweet as milk and honey but the ‘ crazy baldheads” are determined to stop this divine purpose.
A man who cherishes his freedom does not vote into power a mediocre president or governor.
In perilous times like this, we need an anchor, we need men like David in the Bible, men of unquestionable integrity, men who reverence God and believe in His Supremacy; men will stand with the people and provide for them, care for them as well as defend their rights from abuse.
These men abound and we must find them and vote them into power with our permanent voters’ card. We will resist the temptation to mortgage our destinies for a porridge of yam.
